The Crazy Book

Haim Gouri

1971

Arab Halva—moist, sticky, fibrous. The taste tears across my lips like a memory. Within me Jaffa stirs, wakens from sleep; eyes and faces of Jaffa.

I am there, it is afternoon, a city half-awake, swept by sea wind. Jaffa arises from sleep domed and spired, shadowy orchards beneath a lilac sky, an ebbing sea like metal.

Evening. This is her silence…

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Creator Bio

Haim Gouri

1923–2018
Haim Gouri, poet, author, journalist, and documentary filmmaker, was born in Tel Aviv. He was a poet of the 1948 Generation and exerted a major influence on modern Hebrew literature. Gouri joined the fighting force, the Palmach, in 1941 and fought in Israel’s War of Independence. He wrote more than twenty books of prose and poetry as well as autobiographical works. From 1974 to 1983, when he headed Documentary Films, Gouri created a renowned trilogy of films on the Holocaust, together with David Bergman and Jacquot Ehrlich.

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